Brno: Foggy Racing Saturday qualifying report

McCoy makes Superpole gain for FPR at Brno
Garry McCoy will start from the third row of the grid after a rousing
qualifying performance for tomorrow's Superbike World Championship round
seven races at the Czech Republic circuit of Brno.
The ...

McCoy makes Superpole gain for FPR at Brno

Garry McCoy will start from the third row of the grid after a rousing
qualifying performance for tomorrow's Superbike World Championship round
seven races at the Czech Republic circuit of Brno.

The Australian edged out the likes of Frankie Chili and Nori Haga in
securing the final Superpole slot by one hundredth of a second. He then
sliced another half a second off his best time with an eye-catching
Superpole lap to leap up a whole row and qualify in 12th place.

Troy Corser claimed pole position with the only lap in the 2:02s but
just 0.2 seconds separated Garry's time of 2:03.9 from the factory
Ducati of Regis Laconi at the head of the third row.

Steve Martin also made further progress, improving his best lap of
yesterday by more than a second to finish the morning session 14th
fastest, although he missed out on Superpole by just three places.

Garry said: "Having just missed out on the top 16 yesterday, and having
just squeezed into Superpole this morning, it's awesome to have moved
up a whole row in Superpole. I couldn't have asked much more from my
lap. I am only 0.2 seconds behind one of the factory Ducati bikes at
a place where you need a lot of bottom end power, so I must be making
up time on the brakes and with corner speed. I have seen the bikes of
people like Abe and Chili out on track and they are so much quicker out
of the corners. But everyone is having problems spinning up the race
tyres a bit more than we are and I am hoping that they might burn them
out towards the end of the race. At the start of the race, when things
are tightly packed, we might lose a few places on the straights so we
need a good start if a top 10 finish is going to be realistic. We have
got pretty close with suspension set-up and tyre choice but need to do a
bit more work on a clutch problem overnight."

Steve said: "I was pretty happy to improve by another second in morning
qualifying and we were really unfortunate not to be in Superpole. It's
one of those things you want to be involved in, although I do not think
it is too much of a penalty for the race to have missed out. I think
I have learned the track pretty well and I went quicker again this
afternoon on race tyres, which is a positive. I also want to try a few
things with the gearing for morning warm-up but I am happy with my race
set-up and the team has worked well and methodically. I am starting on
the row behind where the points start so, if I can have the kind of
first lap that I have been having recently, then hopefully I can go
forward through the field."